NEARLY 78 per cent of children of mixed or inter church marriages were recorded as Catholic in the 1991 census, a paper from the Economic and Social Research Institute has shown.
The figure for marriages involving Catholics and Church of Ireland members was 73 per cent. The research was carried out by Prof Jerry Sexton and Mr Richard O'Leary for the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
It shows a marked increase be tween 1981 and 1991 in the number of mixed marriage families. In the 1981 census there were 6,570 such families with 14 813 children, of whom 12,760 (86.1, per cent) were Catholic.
By 1991 the number of mixed marriage families had increased to 9,110 and the number of children to 20 420 of whom 15,886 (77.8 per cent) were Catholic.
The census figures showed that in 1991 nearly one quarter of all married people from the minority religious communities were in mixed marriages.
The ESRI researchers also note that the number of mixed marriage families in 1991 was "quite large" when measured against the number of families where both parents were from a minority religion - 14,508 with 32,385 children.
These figures are of particular interest in the light of statements by the Catholic bishops' delegation at the forum last Friday that the decision on how children of a mixed marriage are brought up is now a matter for the parents' alone.
Bishop Donal Murray quoted a 1983 episcopal guideline which said a Catholic partner's pre marriage agreement to bring up the children as Catholics was "in no way to deny that your partner may feel equally strongly on the matter, and has an equal right to claim that his or her conscience, rights and duties should be taken seriously".
The ESRI researchers observe that mixed marriages are "very relevant to numerical loss in so far as the minority religious communities are concerned, as the children of these marriages are disproportionately brought up as Catholics. These losses assume even greater significance if cumulative or inter generational effects are taken into account."